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| Birth Name(s) : Gloria May Josephine Swanson |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
Wallace Beery (1916-1919) |
| Profession:
N/A |
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Full Gloria Swanson Biography
Gloria Swanson (March 27, 1899 - April 4, 1983) was an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning American Hollywood actress. She was prolific during the silent film era, but her career declined with the advent of "talkies". She is now best known for her comeback role in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950), in which—mirroring her own life—she portrayed a former silent movie star largely forgotten by audiences of the day.
She was born Gloria May Josephine Swanson (or Svensson) in a small house in Chicago, Illinois to a Swedish American father, Joseph, who was a soldier, and a Polish American mother, Adelaide (née Klanoski), but she grew up mainly in Puerto Rico, Chicago, and Key West, Florida. Gloria didn't intend on going into show business. After her formal education in the Chicago school system and elsewhere, she began work in a department store as a sales clerk.
Her film debut was in 1914 as an extra in The Song of Soul for Chicago's Essanay Studios. While on a tour of the studio, a young Gloria asked to be in the movie just for fun. Guessing her acting quality, Essanay hired her to feature in several movies, including His New Job, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin.
In her heyday, audiences went to her films not only for her emotional portrayals in lurid romances, but to see her wardrobe. Frequently ornamented with beads, jewels, peacock and ostrich feathers, haute couture of the day or extravagant period pieces, one would hardly suspect that Gloria was barely five feet (1.52 m) tall.
In 1925, she starred in the first French-American coproduction, Madame Sans-Gêne directed by Léonce Perret. During the production of this film, she met her third husband Henry de la Falaise, Marquis de la Falaise, who was originally hired to be her translator during the film's production.
She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as the title character in the 1928 film Sadie Thompson, costarring and directed by Raoul Walsh, based on Somerset Maugham's short story "Miss Thompson," later called "Rain" (the story was re-filmed under this title in 1932, starring Joan Crawford and directed by Lewis Milestone). Her first independent production The Love of Sunya, in which she costarred with John Boles and Pauline Garon, opened the Roxy Theater in New York City on March 11, 1927. (Swanson was pictured in the ruins of the Roxy on October 14, 1960 during the demolition of the theater in a famous photo taken by Time-Life photographer Eliot Elisofon.)
Swanson's unfinished film Queen Kelly (1929) was directed by Erich von Stroheim and produced by Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., father of future President John F. Kennedy. She was romantically linked to the elder Kennedy at the time.
Swanson ultimately made talkies, even singing in The Trespasser (1929) directed by Edmund Goulding, Indiscreet (1931), and Music in the Air (1934). Even though she managed to make the transition into talkies, her career began to decline.
She received several subsequent acting offers but turned most of them down, saying they tended to be pale imitations of Norma Desmond. Her last major Hollywood motion picture role was in Three for Bedroom "C" in 1952. Swanson played an aging movie star in the Warner Bros. comedy. With disappointing reviews and ticket sales, the failure ended Swanson's comeback as a movie actress.
Gloria Swanson died in New York City of a heart ailment (she was believed to be 84); she was cremated and her ashes were buried at the Episcopal Church of Heavenly Rest in New York City.
She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6748 Hollywood Boulevard and another for television at 6301 Hollywood Boulevard. |
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